ome moments without speaking. Both noted
the fresh lines of suffering in each other's faces. They had been
through the long valley of the shadow of sorrow since they had last
met. But O'Connell thought, as he looked at her, that all the suffering
he had gone through passed from him as some hideous dream. It was worth
it--these months of torture--just to be looking at her now. Worth the
long black nights--the labours in the heat of the day, with life's
outcasts around him; the taunts of his gaolers: worth all the infamy of
it--just to stand there looking at her.

She had taken his life in her two little hands.

He had bathed his soul all these months in the thought of her. He had
prayed night and day that he might see her standing near him just as
she was then: see the droop of her eye and the silk of her hair and
feel the touch of her hand and hear the exquisite tenderness of her
voice.

He stood mute before her.

She held out her hand and said simply

"Thank you for coming."

"It was good of you to let me," he answered hoarsely. "They have not
broken your spirit or your courage?"

"No," he replied tensely; "they are the stronger."

"I thought they would be," she said proudly.

All the while he was looking at the pale face and the thin transparency
of her hands.

"But you have suffered, too. You have been ill. Were you in--danger?"
His voice had a catch of fear in it as he asked the, to him, terrible
question.

"No. It was just a fever. It is past. I am a little weak--a little
tired. That will pass, too."

"If anything had happened to you--or ever should happen!" He buried his
face in his hands and moaned "Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"

His body shook with the sobs he tried vainly to check. Angela put her
hand gently on his shoulder.

"Don't do that," she whispered.

He controlled himself with an effort.

"It will be over in a moment. Just a moment. I am sorry."

He suddenly knelt at her feet, his head bowed in reverence. "God help
me," he cried faintly, "I love you! I love you!"

She looked down at him, her face transfigured.

He loved her!

The beat of her heart spoke it! "He loves you!" the throbbing of her
brain shouted it: "He loves you!" the cry of her soul whispered it: "He
loves you!"

She stretched out her hands to him:

"My love is yours, just as yours is mine. Let us join our lives and
give them to the suffering and the oppressed."

He looked up at her in wonder.

"I daren't. Thin